Young at heart love dinosaur exhibit

A few innocuous screams pierced the low rumble of animatronic roaring Friday evening in the Peoria Civic Center as children caught their first sight of dinosaurs — moving dinosaurs.

Thomas Bruch

PEORIA — A few innocuous screams pierced the low rumble of animatronic roaring Friday evening in the Peoria Civic Center as children caught their first sight of dinosaurs — moving dinosaurs.

The Discover the Dinosaurs exhibit featured mostly benign displays of animatronic dinosaurs, but the sudden snap of a raptor’s menacing jaw or a boisterous roar from a Tyrannosaurus Rex could elicit shock.

Or it produced an entirely different reaction.

“Coooool,” said Jack Gramm, a 5-year-old from Gridley who spent some bonding time with his father, Paul, amid the prehistoric creatures.

The exhibit continues the rest of the weekend, starting at 10 a.m. both days, with a slate of activities for the whole family. Inflatables, mini-golf, face-painting, mazes and a digging game all adhere to the dino-themed event.

Two dino theaters projected educational films and the “Land Before Time” movies on a loop, while children of a certain height rode replicas of the smaller species of dinosaurs. Sprinkled throughout the exhibit hall were quirky photograph opportunities next to immobile dinosaur heads and on the backs of smaller dinos.

Eight-year-old Max Bannan moved from dino-ride to dino-ride as his parents took pictures of him from afar.

“Riding the dinosaurs was really fun,” Bannan said. “I like the fact that they were animated, too.”

Jake Karan, assistant manager of Discover the Dinosaurs, said the nearly life-size tyrannosaurus rex display garners the most attention with the combination of animatronic movements and factual information about the large creature on a screen.

Children giggled when the fierce dinosaur’s little arms moved and gawked in wide-eyed wonderment when the screen noted that the Rex can lift 400 pounds with those comically scrawny arms and can bite with the force of five tons.

The dimmed lights in the Civic Center exhibit hall produce a foreboding atmosphere at first glance. Paul Gramm said his son, clad in a festive dinosaur sweatshirt, was nervous while first hearing all the dinosaur noises but overcame his initial fears sooner than expected.

“Now he’s sticking his head into the dinosaur’s mouths,” Paul Gramm said.

Thomas Bruch can be reached at 686-3188 or tbruch@pjstar.com. Follow him on Twitter @ThomasBruch.